FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 6, 2018
CONTACT: Desmond Lee; desmond.lee@berlinrosen.com; 646-517-1826
KATHY KRANINGER SHOULD PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM DEBT TRAP LOANS
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the GOP-controlled Senate narrowly voted along party lines to confirm Kathy Kraninger for Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Kraninger – who currently works as an aide to Mick Mulvaney at the Office of Management and Budget – looks ready to continue acting Director Mulvaney’s current agenda of eroding consumer protections. For the past year, Mulvaney has led the consumer bureau in a sharply anti-consumer direction, including pushing forward with plans to gut the bureau’s 2017 rule to stop payday loan debt traps.
The Stop The Debt Trap campaign, a coalition of over eight hundred consumer, civil rights, faith, social service, labor, and other groups in all fifty states, spoke out against Kraninger’s confirmation:
“Mick Mulvaney has undercut common-sense policies aimed at protecting the American public from deceptive and predatory lending practices. Kathy Kraninger has publicly stated that she could not identify any of his actions with which he disagrees – meaning she will continue an attack on Americans’ economic security,” said Center for Responsible Lending Senior Legislative Counsel Yana Miles. “If Kraninger plans on taking her public duty seriously, she should commit to implementing the Payday Rule as it is written, and put the CFPB back on the path of protecting consumers from financial misconduct.”
“Kathy Kraninger should follow through on her comments to the Senate that she examine debt trap lending closely before she continues her current boss’s plans to gut vital borrower protections,” said José A., Payday Campaign Manager at Americans for Financial Reform. “The consumer bureau should return to its work, implementing the payday rule as it currently stands and renewing supervision that protects active duty service members from illegally high loans. Kraninger has a clear choice to make – she can faithfully uphold the mission of the consumer bureau to protect families from the financial industry’s worst abuses or she can continue Mulvaney’s playbook of catering to predatory lenders at the expense of the 99 percent.”
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